Education, Stading Style

I’m enthralled by the Global Read Aloud.  Tens of thousands of teachers, hundreds of thousands of students, all reading the same book at the same time.  All around the world, and then connecting about it.  This example of how technology expands the classroom should be extended to all sorts of content.  But there’s something about the reading aloud bit that takes this technological masterpiece and turns it into magic that’s not the same as a world-wide Skype session with a scientist.  And I think that is a good thing.

You can still join in!  www.globalreadaloud.com

I’m getting a lot of text notifications from Edmodo these days regarding this year’s Global Read Aloud.  I’m so excited and it isn’t even until October!  I am going to read The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane with my elementary group and hope to read The Fourteenth Goldfish with my middle school reading class.  Right now, we are working at making connections with other classrooms to share the book.  Interested?  Intrigued?  I’d love to help you get involved with this project!

http://www.globalreadaloud.com/

Even with standardized testing LOOMING…or maybe because of it…we took some time for Genius Hour last week. My students work so hard on their projects; let me share some with you.

When a student moved, this student took over his volcano project:

Next, another boy is writing his own guide to surviving Minecraft.  We hope to get it published online somewhere.

This student is half a partnership that is planning a school-wide paper airplane contest:

Another girl wanted to learn more about traditional Native Alaskan housing and is finishing up the interior of a sod dwelling:

This project has been the most difficult to keep moving, my rose gardener.  She’s working on her final poster now:

These are her roses:

 (I trust you see her frustration.)

After studying salmon, this fourth grader made a life-sized three-dimensional model.  He used finger paint and said it had been a while since a teacher let him do that.

He’s created a collage to mail to his favorite ball player, in hopes of an autograph:

She’ll have a Barbie dollhouse when she’s finished:

And soon, this will be a model of Jupiter:

I love Genius Hour because I see my students as creators.  We get that sometimes in our other Language Arts work each day, but this hour is when they shine.

Want to learn more about Genius Hour? (The only real answer to that is “Yes!”)  Check out the Genius Hour Live Binder or follow #geniushour on Twitter.

We’ve just finished a book called Using Energy Wisely in our elementary reading class.  The students should now be able to identify various problems with the different types of electricity production (burning fuels, nuclear, wind, solar, and hydroelectric power were in the book) as well as tell some ways to save electricity.  We are through the organization step of our writing project, persuasive letters encouraging the wise use of energy and hope that the Homer News will publish some of them as letters to the editor.  This is my first time to submit student writing to an outside publication, the kids seem interested in the possibility of being published so perhaps we shall see some names in print.